A World Beyond the Stone

The lines wrapped around the building, throngs of people from every nation were waiting to get in on a cool, rainy, overcast day in London.

I’d been here before in 2006, but there was a difference in the air this time. As we made our way to the ticket office, I glimpsed a powerful man standing just inside the ancient wooden doors of Westminster Abbey. Cloaked in black with a red sash, I was instantly intrigued. Holy men move me; not in the way of a follower but in the ways of what lives in my heart and inspires me to practice what I teach every day.

I motioned to him and said in a voice just loud enough to be heard over the crowd but soft enough as to not be intrusive; “Father will you please bless me?” He replied, “Yes, I’ll wait for you here.” I later realized that he was a Reverend, not a Catholic and not a Father but in the end, did it really matter?

As I approached him it was as if I’d known him all my life, yet he was a stranger amongst thousands of others. He took my hand and the hand of my friend Debra and began praying. Here we were in the middle of so many tourists you could hardly move and yet, a sense of being the only one in the Abbey overcame me. How could I know that I was being blessed by a man who has dined with Queen Elizabeth on more than one occasion, while standing in the very place where Princess Diana and the future King of England were married in 1981.

Time and history stood still and as we were about to go our separate ways, he whispered this; “Do you see that large wooden door in…